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In the '20s she began a long liaison with composer Louis Horst, who became her musical mentor. In 1948 she was briefly married to Erick Hawkins, a thrilling dancer who later founded his own enduring company. She never lacked for acolytes: Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov, who offered their classically trained bodies to her training, and the late designer Halston, who cosseted her and dressed her like the goddess she was in her later years.
In the studio she could be harsh. She spoke in a whisper that was louder than a shout. On occasion she laughed heartily at her students' efforts. "With Martha," Richard Boone once said, "you get it right away or jump out the window." Glen Tetley, a protege in the 1950s, went on to become a ballet choreographer. Just before his first major premiere, he developed crippling back spasms; no one else knew his role. Graham solved the problem. Spying him in a cafeteria, she walked over and slapped his face hard. "You stand up there and go out and dance," she commanded. "It was the shock I needed," says Tetley.
Her dancers worshiped her. Says Tetley: "It was like belonging to the most wonderful religious sect. With Martha you were not only training the body but opening the soul." Shelley Washington, who danced for Graham in the '70s, recalls some sources of her magic: "She was a fabulous storyteller -- there was such vitality and imagery."
After Graham stopped performing, she was still in the spotlight: marching on Washington to plead for government grants, attending fund-raising galas where she spoke mesmerizingly about her life. Her father became a regular player in these little monologues as she summoned up her childhood self riding beside him in the buggy while he made his rounds. Perhaps it was then that the seeds of an artistic revolution were sown, that the secret lies in an indomitable commitment to honesty in motion.